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Many abroad welcome Obama's win -- baltimoresun.com

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Saved by 1 people (1 private), first by anonymouse user on 2008-06-25


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Many abroad welcome Obama's win

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Associated Press
June 5, 2008

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LONDON - Barack Obama's triumph over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination triggered jubilation among his relatives in Kenya, hope among people around the world and a few questions about what this inspiring, charismatic politician actually stands for.

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Many expressed optimism yesterday that a November victory by Obama - a black American with relatives in Africa and childhood friends in Asia - would mark a major shift from the deeply unpopular administration of President Bush.

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In Kenya, home to Obama's family on his father's side, the Kenya Times newspaper devoted its front page to the story, under the headline "Obama makes history."

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In Mexico City, hairdresser Susan Mendoza said when she learned Obama had clinched the nomination: "Bush was for the elite. Obama is of the people."

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The excitement was less about Obama's foreign policy - which remains vague - than a sense that his victory marks a historic moment.

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Michael Cox, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, said Obama's win "has sent out a lot of positive signals around the world."

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"He has a very appealing persona - elegant, fluent, strings lots of sentences together into paragraphs," Cox said. "But in terms of [his] actual policies toward the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, China, Europe - actually, we don't know."

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That uncertainty did little to dampen enthusiasm for Obama.

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The German government's coordinator on U.S. relations, Karsten Voigt, said many Germans "find [Obama's] mixture of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy very attractive."

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Jean-Marc Damier, a 39-year-old man from the Paris suburbs who works in marketing, said Obama's relative lack of experience could be an asset.

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"The candidate's freshness can only do good, because the way things have been done before created a mess," he said.

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on 2008-06-25 by visigoth

You "ain't" seen nothing yet, Monsieur Damier.

The Times of London, which proclaimed in a headline that "Obama waits on the threshold of history,"

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said in an editorial that Obama's campaign "has rekindled America's faith in its prodigious powers of reinvention - and the world's admiration for America."

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France's Le Monde said Obama's grass-roots campaign, which attracted thousands of young supporters, "demonstrated that American democracy is not doomed to being confiscated by a narrow political class, financed by lobbies and piloted by communication experts."

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on 2008-06-25 by visigoth

Yeah..democracy had a lot to do with it.

the 46-year-old Illinois senator

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He has also shown willingness to engage in dialogue with Iran, North Korea and Cuba - nations long isolated by U.S. policies.

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Obama opposed the invasion and has called for an early troop withdrawal.

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Jorge Serguera, a 70-year-old retiree in Havana, said he thought that, if elected, Obama would work to loosen Washington's nearly 50-year-old trade embargo against Cuba. Obama is "a thinking man of ethics and ideals," he said.

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Many Asians welcomed the selection of a candidate perceived as more aware of the world outside U.S. borders than Bush.

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The Hawaii-born son of a Kenyan father and a mother who was born in Kansas, Obama spent several years of his childhood in Jakarta, Indonesia.

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Indonesians were rooting yesterday for the man they consider a hometown hero.

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Obama lived in the predominantly Muslim nation from age 6 to 10 with his mother and Indonesian stepfather, and he was fondly remembered by former teachers and classmates.

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"He was an average student but very active," said Widianto Hendro Cahyono, 48, who was in the same third-grade class as Obama at SDN Menteng elementary school in Jakarta.

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I never imagined he would become a great man."

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A Chinese scholar said that while he did not expect major changes in U.S. foreign policy, an Obama White House would have a very different tone from a Bush one.

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"He will bring new energy into America's domestic politics and foreign policies," said Zhu Feng, deputy director at the Center of International and Strategic Studies at Peking University in Beijing.

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However, Obama has made himself unpopular in Pakistan by saying the United States should act alone on information about terrorist targets within the country's national borders, leading some to believe he will be worse for the country than Bush.

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